Tag: gatherings

Good morning, friends. 🙂 I hope you had a very blessed Easter. Ours was pretty low-key — just time spent with family and a Greek feast that is still making my mouth water. I’m thinking I need to make another batch of my favorite orzo salad just because.

Easter weekend was a busy one for us. We had a beautiful wedding that we went to on Saturday, plus all of the food prep and regular weekend stuff that goes on. This past weekend was a little less crazy but we still packed in a bunch. We found some new things at IKEA, which I will share soon. Trying to pack as much organization as possible into our little home. 🙂

Yesterday was two years since my sweet Gramma went to Heaven and I am missing her a lot. Feeling happy to connect with her in all the ways she shows up in my daily life, though. I see her everywhere. I look for her everywhere. She just always shows up! Like she always did when she was here with us on Earth. So thankful for that.

Even though we weren’t home for most of the day on Easter, this was our little table that I decorated for us. Grey and I dyed those eggs the night before Easter — just in time! 😉 It was fun to come home to a festive little tabletop — it’s the little things.

I’ll be posting next week about some new things around our house, as well as our front porch refresh, and some long-term plans for our living room.

Hey there, friends. I hope you’re gearing up for a fun weekend. You can find me busy baking and cooking today in preparation for some goodies I’m bringing to our Easter celebration at my in-laws’ house on Sunday. It’s one of my favorite days of the year with them and I can’t wait!

So let me just tell you… I have an amazing friend who I met in design school several years ago who has made such a huge impact on me. She’s made me feel more confident in my skin, she’s helped me find direction when I was struggling, she’s one of my mentors and one of my biggest cheerleaders. Basically, she is incredible and means so much to me.

A couple of years ago she gave me the most incredible gift… a set of Limoges china that was her mother’s. Now, when Grey and I were married, we didn’t register for china. I wanted to, but I couldn’t decide upon anything that I wanted. Plus when we got married I was twenty-one and thought that it was pretty likely that whatever I picked out in my early twenties I wouldn’t really be in love with later on in my life. And I was probably right — over time, my tastes have developed, my style has been honed in, and I know that it will continue to do so as I get older.

I couldn’t believe it when she gave this to me. The pattern is simple — roses. They remind me of a watercolor painting.

Two years in a row now, during the Spring and Summer months, we pull these dishes out and they are a sweet reminder of friendship, gratitude, love, and happy happy times.

The rosemary is from my sis-in-law’s backyard. After I tucked these sprigs in, my hands smelled so good. 🙂 You could also smell the deliciousness radiating from the table itself. It was kind of magical.

The ticking stripe “runner” is actually just a piece of fabric that I have folded right now. Maybe someday I’ll sew it, maybe not. 🙂 I knew I wanted a bigger black and white print for the napkins, and these buffalo check ones are such nice quality and were exactly what I needed to pair perfectly with the floral plates.

I took these photos at nine o’clock in the morning and the sun was shining in so peacefully. It’s moments like these that I breathe in that sweetness of joy and savor every moment of it.

That lamp is a relatively new HomeGoods find. I wanted something a little taller, a little bigger, and a little more cheerful than the brass one that was there before (which has been relocated to our kitchen — always musical lamps around here, ha!).

The fun bunny banner is back again this year. I found this at the Target Dollar Spot a few years ago. I used it in our home last year and also when we lived at my in-laws’ house. We’ve gotten good use out of it.

Did you know that the Dollar Store sells packages of moss? The days of me buying a $5 bag of moss at a craft store are over — $1 is my new jam. The bags aren’t small, either. Just passing that along. This nest came in a pack of two at Hobby Lobby (similar). The little dish is actually the bottom of a cloche that came from one of my trips to Highland Yard Vintage.

Our kitchen has been infused with a little bit of Spring, too. I looked around at Hobby Lobby for a black and white ticking stripe runner and couldn’t find anything but blue and white (which was also really cute, but not the color I wanted). So it was off to the fabric department where I found the perfect fabric thanks to my sweet hubby who spotted it.

I haven’t hemmed it, and who knows, maybe I never will — right now it’s folded and I’m good with it. The napkins are vintage and I recently switched out our plates for these simpler square ones from when we got married.

These glass squares are so cool and my mom-in-law brought them back for me from a trip to Washington. She also brought the faux succulents back, too. I filled the squares with rubber mulch, layered some stones on top, and then nestled the succulent in.

This is our happy place. This is home. And we are grateful every day that we get to live here together and make all.the.memories.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to stop by! Happy Spring! 🙂

I know that most of us are well on our way to Christmas, but I couldn’t go without sharing about our belated family Thanksgiving celebration at my parents’ house. We had a great time, and we even capped off the night by decorating their Christmas tree together. 🙂

This is the tablescape that I came up with. The stick runner is an oldie from Target but it comes in handy this time of year! You’ll recognize those pumpkins from around our house. 😉 I brought them over for the table. The sunflowers were a gift from my brother’s girlfriend to my momma.

Those napkin rings are also from years ago — they’re from Pottery Barn. I love them and I usually only use them once or twice this time of year but I’m always thankful that I have them.

Our lil guy came with us and all the pups made for good photography subjects — they’re all so cute!

Wally…lol. So “regal.” I didn’t get a good picture of Alvy because he wiggles!

Hey, guys! I hope you’re having a great week so far! This is a busy one for me work-wise so I’m writing to you late tonight. 😉

How was your Thanksgiving? We spent the whole long weekend with our families and we put up our Christmas decor together, which was so much fun. It took a full 12 hours but it was worth it — as Grey puts it, our house looks like a Winter Wonderland – ha!

I realized I never shared my Fall decor, so this post has some photos that I snapped. Also, when we had a late Thanksgiving celebration at my parents’ house on Sunday I created a fun tablescape so I still have that to share, too. All kinds of Fall stuff, even though a lot of us are already well on our way to Christmas…

I was inspired by a floral arrangement during our stay at The Inn at 410 so that is kind of what I modeled mine after. This was not easy! I am kind of a perfectionist and if I’m being honest, I didn’t *love* how this turned out, but at some point I just had to look at it and say, “That’ll do, pig.” (From Babe, duh).

My velvet pumpkins were HomeGoods scores and are pretty heavy and substantial. They must be filled with beans or rice or something!

I purchased a couple of these plush pumpkins and they were from the Target Dollar Spot. I just stuffed this one into the apothecary jar and sprinkled some pumpkin vase filler around like confetti. 😉

This display I loved to look at and loved to create. The pinecones are all from our trip to Tahoe over the summer and they.are.huge! I baked them to help them let go of some of the extra sap they were holding onto and my house smelled amazing that night. The tray that this is sitting on top of is one of my Gramma’s beautiful silver pieces that I have inherited. I was so excited to use it for this vignette.

On our kitchen table, I layered a bunch! One of my Gramma’s silver trays on the bottom, an oval grapevine wreath, and then a soup server that I snagged from the giveaway pile at my in-laws’ house. I had this in mind as soon as I saw it so I had to have it!

Of course I have to show you one of our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner — this amazing pie that is a bit of a labor of love, but ridiculously worth it. Grey made most of it — I just directed him. So worth the time it takes to make it — and worth the calories! 😉

Hey, guys! I don’t know about you, but I have been using my kitchen a lot lately and it has been glorious. 🙂 I have been having the best time. I’ve been baking, roasting, testing recipes — it’s one of my favorite parts about the season. Today I have a round-up of Fall treats that look amazing, including some that we have tried and loved.

I brought these to a ‘lil dinner party a couple of weekends ago and they were ridiculously good. I’ve even made another batch since then and left the icing off so that I could call them “muffins.” 😉 I added a little bit more cream cheese to the icing and reduced the powdered sugar a bit since I like my cream cheese frosting a little more tangy. I also subbed banana for some of the pumpkin when I made these the second time — very delicious!

What are your favorite recipes for Fall?

Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had a great week. It’s been a super busy one for me and I am looking forward to the weekend. I bet you are, too. 🙂

So let’s talk about this table setting… The ceramic pumpkin has been sitting in the middle of our kitchen table, on top of that tray, with moss and creepy crawlies for the better part of two months. Inside there is more moss, and three flameless candles that are really cool — they work off of a remote and you can change the color about twelve different ways. A HomeGoods score, of course.

But this table really came together all because of some sad, dying flowers. Yep. I purchased some blooms from Sprouts during a grocery shopping trip a couple of weeks ago, and last weekend they were looking mighty d.e.a.d. But I was actually super excited about their crispiness because I knew they would be the perfect addition to a table setting! See the way my brain works?

So I totally celebrated their death and they were repurposed. I used my vintage striped blue linens because I do think they look just as good during Fall as they do during Summer with seashells. They’re transitional napkins… Fancy.

The sunflower just got tucked in between the two plates. I really like that everything on the table looks pretty dried out… it adds to the spookiness. 🙂

This was my Sunday puttering last weekend. I love shopping my house for things — apparently even dead flowers, lol! This little space is still making me happy.

I hope you have an awesome weekend!

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I’m Maria, and I’m so glad that you stopped by. Whether you are embarking on a new design project, perpetually zhushing your home, or just wanting to feast your eyes on something pretty, I hope you find something that inspires you here.